the end of my seven day fast

Isaiah 53:1-6 NLT

        Who has believed our message
           and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
        He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
           and like a root out of dry ground.
        He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
           nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
        He was despised and rejected by men,
           a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
        Like one from whom men hide their faces
           he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
        Surely he took up our infirmities
           and carried our sorrows,
        yet we considered him stricken by God,
           smitten by him, and afflicted.
        But he was pierced for our transgressions,
           he was crushed for our iniquities;
        the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
           and by his wounds we are healed.
        We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
           each of us has turned to his own way;
        and the LORD has laid on him
           the iniquity of us all.

It is the end of my seven day fast. I ate a little breakfast this morning at the church function after our Sunrise Services, and then I had lunch with some friends. All in all, I am pretty stuffed. Considering that I have had nothing to eat for a week then real food, it is not surprising.

I am not sure that anything came out of my fast. I have heard no mighty words from God. I have decided that from now on, I will probably go in three day increments, at least for a while. A week or more does a lot of damage to my system, especially this close to the last one.

But even though I have not heard answers from God, I am sure he heard me. He knows my heart and I think he heard me.

Father God, I ask you for power from on high. Give me strength to do what you want and the love you have for your church placed in my heart. I praise  you. Amen.

day seven of my week long fast toward resurrection sunday

Isaiah 53:1-6 NLT

        Who has believed our message
           and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
        He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
           and like a root out of dry ground.
        He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
           nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
        He was despised and rejected by men,
           a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
        Like one from whom men hide their faces
           he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
        Surely he took up our infirmities
           and carried our sorrows,
        yet we considered him stricken by God,
           smitten by him, and afflicted.
        But he was pierced for our transgressions,
           he was crushed for our iniquities;
        the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
           and by his wounds we are healed.
        We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
           each of us has turned to his own way;
        and the LORD has laid on him
           the iniquity of us all.

It is day seven of my week long fast toward Resurrection Sunday. I am not really sure what I have accomplished in this fast.  Again, I have lost a lot of weight. I am smaller now than I was at the end of my 21 day fast. I wear clothing smaller than ever before. That doesn’t hurt my feelings. However, that is not why I went on the fast.

On this fast, I have found that I need to connect more strongly with the church and with the Lord. That has been on my mind a lot.

I need that very badly.

I have given myself to both the Lord and to the church for almost forty years. I love both. I love the Lord more, but as I have made myself the servant of his body, I have a lot of love for it.

I guess the problem is that it has not always loved me back.

The church has driven my son away from the Lord. He saw the things that it was capable of and associated it with God. I tried to make him understand that the two were to necessarily synonymous, that God worked differently than the church did. I tried to tell him that God loves us even when his people don’t.

But, it is hard to argue with an experience. He saw them as being that way and it was hard to bring him to a different conclusion.

Now my daughter would go to church if the people there hit her with a stick on her way into the building. She  just loves God and loves his church.

Two kids, both responding in different ways to things that the body of Christ has done to their father.

I try to remember that Jesus, as he was dying, forgave those who were killing him. I try to have that same attitude in me as was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2), but it is hard.

I find myself here in Lincoln, near the end of my life, far from those who love me and all my family.

But no matter – but it does matter – I love this church, this body of people who try their best to live like they think God wants them to. They are not always right in what they do, but that is my mission as a pastor: to teach them.

And it is my mission to love them. I do this in various ways.

I try to be with them in times of trouble. I feed them, both physically and spiritually. I give them coffee. I wait when they disappoint me. I laugh with them and cry with them. I am patient when they fall short of what I think they need to do.

And, above all, I love them.

Father God, I ask you for more strength in loving your people. Give me the same attitude toward them as you have. Make me more tender to them. I praise you. Amen.

day six of my week long fast

Isaiah 53:1-6 NLT

        Who has believed our message
           and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
        He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
           and like a root out of dry ground.
        He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
           nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
        He was despised and rejected by men,
           a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
        Like one from whom men hide their faces
           he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
        Surely he took up our infirmities
           and carried our sorrows,
        yet we considered him stricken by God,
           smitten by him, and afflicted.
        But he was pierced for our transgressions,
           he was crushed for our iniquities;
        the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
           and by his wounds we are healed.
        We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
           each of us has turned to his own way;
        and the LORD has laid on him
           the iniquity of us all.

It is day six of my week long fast looking toward Resurrection Sunday. I have come to the point that I am no longer hungry now. Food looks good, but I don’t feel the driving need.

The quesadillas I made Ella last night were awfully good looking, more than any of the other stuff on her plate. But I am the master, not food.

That is a battle I have fought all my life. I always were amazed at people who forgot to eat. How can you forget to eat? I hardly ever forgot to eat. But I found that after this last fast, a couple of days, I just forgot to eat. Surprised the fire out of me.

Maybe I am getting there. I would like to have God have control over my body, not food. Maybe it is coming. A few hundred more fasts and maybe it will be here. Or dead, one or the other.

I love the church of Jesus Christ. I always have. I have not always liked it, but I have always loved it. You can love something without necessarily liking it.

I knew a boy and girl when I was young who loved each other dearly, but were always in arguments. They really didn’t like each other. I have found out in later years how that can be possible, but at the time, it baffled me. How can you love someone without liking them?

But I am sure Jesus wasn’t exactly liking all these jeering people standing around the cross as he died. I am sure that his affection didn’t brim over for the apostles as he heard them deny they knew him. Pity maybe, but not liking.

And I have found in my life that it is often hard to like someone you feel pity for. Pity is too strong. And it is hard to like someone who is doing things to hurt you.

Love them, yes. I gave my life to the church because I loved the church. But I have had to recognize that it did not always love me back. That didn’t stop my own love, but it sure put a damper on my liking.

In fact, some of the people I love, I can barely stand to be in the same room with.

But, of course, that is human nature.

My mother-in-law used to say of some people, I love you but I hate your low-down ways. I guess that sums up things well. It sure sums up how God feels: love the sinner and hate the sin.

Father God, I ask you for strength to love your church more, to see your church as you see it. Let me be like Jesus. I praise you. Amen.

day five of my week long fast

Isaiah 53:1-6 NLT

        Who has believed our message
           and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
        He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
           and like a root out of dry ground.
        He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
           nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
        He was despised and rejected by men,
           a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
        Like one from whom men hide their faces
           he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
        Surely he took up our infirmities
           and carried our sorrows,
        yet we considered him stricken by God,
           smitten by him, and afflicted.
        But he was pierced for our transgressions,
           he was crushed for our iniquities;
        the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
           and by his wounds we are healed.
        We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
           each of us has turned to his own way;
        and the LORD has laid on him
           the iniquity of us all.

It is day five of my week long fast. We are moving towards the end of Jesus’ earthly life and the beginning of his kingdom.

This day is called Maundy Thursday. Sometimes it is also called Holy Thursday. Maundy comes from an old English word that comes from the Latin, mandatum or commandment. It was named after the comment Jesus gave in John 13 at the Last Supper. The new commandment superceded all the old commandments.

That new commandment is love.

Maundy Thursday is also a day in which foot-washing is traditionally done. Again following Jesus’ example.

But it is the last normal day of Jesus’ life. If you can call Jesus’ life normal.

But it is a full day. He celebrates the last Passover that will be sanctioned by God. There will be more held, but now the Passover and what it signified is gone. In a few days, Jesus will be our Passover.

In 1 Corinthians 5:7, the apostle Paul says: Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us.

Today he also sees a friend betray him. That is such an exquisite pain. It is heart-rending to see one that you trusted and loved turn on you for no real reason. It has happened to me and I suppose will happen again. One that ate at your table and accepted your love and hospitality can stab you in the back. And it hurts almost like that.

Jesus not only sees Judas betray him, but sees all his apostles, people he loved and trusted, turn on him.

About the only difference between them was that Judas got some money for it, while Peter and the others sold him out for a place at a communal fire.

Except for amount of return, there isn’t really any difference. Peter tried to fight first, at least, while Judas went out with a whimper.

But Jesus knew that would happen. And he loved them anyway. He kept the commandment.

1 John 3:16 says: We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.

There was real love: to sacrifice yourself for people who run away from you.

Father God, I ask you for strength to love people anyway. I ask you to give me my fire back and renew my passion. I praise you. Amen.

the fourth day of my week long fast

Isaiah 53:1-6 NLT

Who has believed our message
   and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
   and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
   nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
   a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
   he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities
   and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
   smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
   he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
   and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
   each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
   the iniquity of us all.

I am in my fourth day of my week long fast and already I am suffering some of the problems I suffered when I was on my last fast. The difference, this time, is that I started having difficulties earlier.

But it is amazing at how the things I read, I see with so much more clarity than usually. There is a – high, for lack of a better word that you get when you fast. It is the knowledge that you have been without the basic nutrient of life. But it is also a clearness of mind that can only come that way.

I have been thinking about Holy Week. Today is Wednesday. Depending upon who you read, Jesus was waiting. You have to kind of filter through the gospels to see the events.

On Wednesday, according to Matthew, he and the apostles were going to Jerusalem and wanted something to eat. He went to a fig tree and saw it didn’t have anything on it and he cursed it. An odd thing to do. By the next day it had withered and his disciples were amazed.

On Wednesday, according to Mark and Luke, he went into the temple and once again, drove the moneylenders out as he had done at the very beginning of his ministry in John. It also said that the religious leaders were afraid of him because of his popularity.

On Wednesday, according to John, he did several things. One was that he predicted his death. In 12:28, God speaks to him and verifies his ministry. Then he goes off to be by himself.

By the time he had come to this point, the political opinion of him was dramatically opposed. They were ready to kill him, but couldn’t figure out exactly how to go about it.

Whatever it was that he did, we know that he knew he was about to die. He had boldly walked into Jerusalem the Sunday before and let everybody see him. He had come back because of Lazarus dying. His apostles and everybody else tried to talk him out of it, buthe knew it was time.

I don’t know if he knew the exact timeframe or time-table, but you know he had to be dreading it. This was, after all, the man who sweated so heavily in the Garden the night of his arrest that it looked like the consistency of blood.

He knew he had to do it, but he was not looking forward to it. He was human, and he knew it was going to be painful and protracted. He knew he would be crucified because he  said so at least twice.

John 3:14 says And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. In this he may have thought that he would be lifted up as an example, not necessarily crucified. This was at the beginning of his ministry.

John 8:28 says So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man on the cross, then you will understand that I Am he. I do nothing on my own but say only what the Father taught me”.

Here he knew too well what would probably happen. This was much closer to the end. He knew the common from of death, that there were no merciful deaths except for Roman citizens. And he wasn’t one.

All in all, it was the middle day in a painful week and he is probably ready to be through.

Father God, I ask you for that kind of courage and ability to face what happens, no matter how negative and painful it may be. I praise you. Amen.

only by grace

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)

The death of Jesus looked like the end. The apostles were discouraged, the followers were ready to quit, the devil thought he had won a mighty victory. As the song goes, the demons of hell began to cheer, but little did they know that their end was drawing near.

When Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, he saddled all of humanity with the knowledge of sin. All sin, Romans 3:23 says, and all fall short of the glory of God. And because we sin, we have no access to that Tree of Life that Adam and Eve were able to eat daily. When they ate the fruit of that tree, they were able to live forever.

But when God took them away from that Tree of Life, they began to die.

It took them a long time to die at first. They were still too close to the handwork of God in the creation. They lived for almost a thousand years. When God made something, he made it well. But even though they were very long-loved, they still began to die.

What a shock it must have been when someone caught the first illness, the first cold. When fatigue set in for the first time, or there was hunger, or even a cut. What a shock to see their blood flowing out.

They knew they were mortal now. And when the first person died, they knew that one day they too would die.

And everybody would one day die, because of sin. Including Jesus.

But Jesus didn’t sin (1 Peter 2:22). He did nothing wrong, yet he was mortal and as such would die.

Here was an anomaly. He didn’t sin, so he didn’t participate in what all humanity has in common: sin. Yet he was human, so he had to participate in another thing humanity all has in common: death.

But there is the power. When he died, the devil knew that he had him in his territory now. Death is the realm of satan and he has power there.

Or so he thought.

Because of his sinless life, Jesus was not bound by the fact of sin in his life and the tie all humanity has to Adam. Even though he was human, he didn’t have that tie of sin.

There was no reason for death to hold him. And God brought him back. He was under the power of God. He was shown to be the Son of God when he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 1:4).

Because of that defeat of death (the one he talked about in Matthew 16:18: all the powers of hell will not conquer it), he gives us the power to overcome through him.

His strength is great enough to compensate for our weakness. We do not have to stay dead any more than he did. He had to die because he was human, so do we. But because he was also God, he didn’t have to stay dead. Neither do we through his grace.

It is only through grace we can come to God. Law gives power to sin, but grace ignores sin. By the death of Jesus, we gain life. And in that life, we gain grace.

day three of my fast

Isaiah 53:1-6 NLT

        Who has believed our message
           and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
        He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
           and like a root out of dry ground.
        He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
           nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
        He was despised and rejected by men,
           a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
        Like one from whom men hide their faces
           he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
        Surely he took up our infirmities
           and carried our sorrows,
        yet we considered him stricken by God,
           smitten by him, and afflicted.
        But he was pierced for our transgressions,
           he was crushed for our iniquities;
        the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
           and by his wounds we are healed.
        We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
           each of us has turned to his own way;
        and the LORD has laid on him
           the iniquity of us all.

It is day three of my fast. I have not been able to sleep well tonight for some reason.

At four o’clock I woke up. Shortly thereafter it began to hail. It was a pretty bad one. I do hope the roofs are not totaled again. I also feel sorry for the people next door with their brand new SUV. It is a nice one and they haven’t had it but a month or so. I hope it is not hurt too badly.

As is usual at this time of my fast, I am craving food. Unfortunately, I made up a big batch of one of my favorite foods – pimiento cheese – just the last part of last week. So it is calling.

I am also possessed with a deep sense of failure right now. That also is not uncommon at the beginning of a fast.

I am in this fast to partake of the last week of suffering with Jesus in what way I can. But I am also in this fast to find out what God wants of me. Where does he want me to go? I need to hear from him. I need to know what he wants of me.

Father God, I ask you for direction. I thank you for Jesus who gave me life and who gave me my ministry. Save me, Lord. I praise you. Amen.